Nostalgia
by Kensu
Summary: In the autumn of 2031, Nene Romanova found an encrypted file on the internet which ended up being a job interview for the Knight Sabers. Three years later,someone else has cracked the code...


BGC: Nostalgia !  
Bubblegum Crisis The Story of Knight Sabers "Nostalgia"  
Written by: Chris Schumacher

This story is dedicated to Karl Rim with great respect and admiration.  
He was the best of us, yet few these days even know his name. But you have not been forgotten. Rock on, Krimlin.

--------

Now

1/16/2034--10:32 JST From turinsilkydoll.tknet To: blackskysilkydoll.tknet Re: Our friend Molotov

Hey sis, I think you'd better come in today. When I was fooling around with the old professor, I found a text file in one of the unused directories. It had apparently been put there by a remote user that logged in through port 17.  
I think you know what this means.

Mackie "Man: Tell me, kind grocer, have you monkey nuts?  
Grocer: It is simply the way that I walk, sir"  
-Sir Stone, 1993

Then

Tokyo was cracked. It had been for several years now. Japan's worst geological upheaval since the 1923 quake had forever split old Edo in twain. The fault ran for miles, and was more renowned than the long gone Tokyo Tower ever had been.  
In the rainy season the fault sometimes filled with water, and the foolhardy swam in it. It had only been a month since the rainy season ended,  
but the heat wave had dried up every last drop.  
The night was dark, hot and humid. The air was stagnant, not even an occasional breeze blew to relieve the sweltering heat. The entire fault was swallowed in absolute silence. No cricket had chirped in this part of Tokyo since the Meiji era. This silence was broken by an ear-shattering explosion.  
A humanoid of shimmering blue metal leapt the fault in a single bound.  
It turned around, and its red eyes searched the other shore of the deep scar in the Earth. Several antennae around its eyes moved rapidly, like an insect groping in the darkness.  
Far off was the hiss of escaping gas, and a clank as a pair of steel-enveloped feet came to rest on the ground. A blank face-plate met the glance of the robot's red eyes.  
"He's jumped the chasm," a voice said from inside the suit. It was a cultured voice that didn't contain a single syllable of anger or fear.  
"Wait until I get there," said a gravely voice in her helmet. "I can take out the bastard from our side"  
The figure turned at the clanking sound that came from her left. Coming towards her was another of MegaTokyo's new guardian angels. This one with long tassels draped over her soldiers.  
"I don't suppose you'd reconsider putting jets in my hardsuit," a cheery voice said from beneath the orange faceplate. Another figure appeared, this one in a blue suit. "I'm surprised that it's just standing there." the gravely voice said. "What do you know about this boomer, Sylia"  
"I'm not familiar with this make," Sylia, the one with the cultured voice,  
replied. The cheery voice replied: "It's obviously a combat model, so the goal of its programming would be to destroy us"  
"We may not be its target, Linna." Sylia said. "It may just see us as a distraction. It wouldn't go out of its way to kill us, then"  
The boomer got down on its haunches, obviously preparing to jump back across the chasm.  
"Get ready," Sylia said, her calmness unnerving.  
It leapt towards them. Priss raised her right hand, preparing to fire an EM-charged needle from her railgun. Suddenly she let out a scream as she was hit by a discharge of energy.  
There was a gasp from Linna. "Priss"  
Sylia turned, not towards Priss, but to look in back of her. "That blast didn't come from this boomer"  
Linna tore at the boomer with her tassels, but turned to follow Sylia's gaze. Another boomer, of the same type, was coming towards them from the other direction. The boomer in front of her ducked out of the way of her tassels and lunged for her legs. Linna nimbly moved out of the way, knocking the boomer to the ground with a well-placed kick.  
"Sylia, now!" she shouted as the boomer fell in front of the Knight Sabers'  
founder.  
A spike extended from Sylia's right gauntlet, and she used it to sever the boomer's head from its body. She whirled around to face the other boomer, which was quickly gaining on them.  
"No time like the present," Linna said, and she rushed towards the other boomer.  
Sylia knelt down beside Priss, who hadn't moved since she'd been hit.  
"Are you all right, Priss"  
"Can't... Can't move," she said. "I think that damn thing shorted out my systems"  
"Did you try to reboot?" Sylia asked.  
"That takes too long," Priss said.  
"I'll guard you. Do it." Sylia said, and rose to her feet.  
Inside her suit, Priss reached over and flicked a switch with her teeth.  
Her displays suddenly went dark, except a small LED display that came to life beneath the main LCD screen. 2:00 it said. Two minutes until the system reboot was complete.  
Sylia turned when she heard the treading of heavy metal feet to her right.  
There was another boomer of the same type coming towards them. Something clicked in her mind, and she turned to the left. Sure enough, there was yet another boomer coming towards her from that direction as well.  
"Oh... Oh, damn," she said.  
"What is it?" Priss said. "Sylia, I can't move my head. What's going on"  
Sylia didn't bother to reply, she was quickly doing calculations in her head. "Priss, you'll be safe until I get back"  
"WHAT!" Priss roared.  
Sylia leapt towards the enemy on her right, getting her hand in the ready position. She fired her laser cannon at the oncoming boomer. It cut through its armor, but the boomer shrugged it off.  
Sylia was now hovering in the air with her jets. She gave the back jets full thrust and sailed through the air towards the boomer. It fired continuously at her, she swerved and ducked and not a single bullet reached her. Her tracking computer showed the distance between her and the boomer, the numbers were falling rapidly. She had to get this just right. If she was off by even half-a-second Priss could die.  
When she was within a meter of the boomer she fired her knuckle bomber. She killed one of her jets and whirled around 180 degrees. When she was facing the direction she came from she switched the jet back on. The helpless form of Priss's hardsuit lay next to the fissure, the other boomer quickly zeroing in on it.  
Behind Sylia, her boomer exploded. It only barely registered on her. She didn't bother to turn around and admire her handiwork. She extended both her arms, releasing the blades from her gauntlets. She made a small adjustment to her altitude so she wouldn't rake Priss with her jets.  
The boomer had just come within firing range of Priss when Sylia flew over her. A scant second later she collided with the boomer, pushing it far out of range of Priss. Its feet tore grooves in the pavement as Sylia dragged it along.  
She quickly beheaded the boomer and finally came to rest almost twenty meters from where Priss lay.  
She brought up the fuel display and felt queasy. She had only a third of a tank of propellant left. She'd have to get back to the van before any more boomers showed up.  
By the time Sylia finally got back to Priss, she'd finally regained control of her suit and stood up.  
"Don't ever effing do that again," Priss growled.  
"You really need to learn to trust me, Priss," Sylia said. "You were never in any danger. I can show you the calculations when we get home, if you like"  
Linna walked back towards them, behind her a fire flickered in the distance. "You guys okay?" she asked.  
"Those damn things synchronized," Priss said.  
"I'm afraid so," Sylia said.  
"I thought that wasn't going to happen anymore," Linna said.  
"Someone's going to pay for this," Priss said.

Mackie leapt from his seat when the back door was ripped from the truck.  
He was at first concerned, thinking that it was a boomer. When he realized it was Priss, he was scared shitless.  
Priss grabbed him by the lapels and yanked him out of the van. She held him a foot off the ground.  
"Priss! Be careful, don't forget you're still in your hardsuit!" Linna said.  
"They were synchronizing, you son of a bitch! Did you fall asleep, or were you just looking at porn?" Priss's amplified voice yelled at him.  
"Priss, put him down," Sylia said, without a bit of concern or anger in her voice.  
Priss dropped Mackie to the ground. He stared up at the armor-plated ape-  
woman and tried to catch his breath. "You have to believe me, the program stopped working. They must've been using some new kind of transmitter. There weren't any synchronization signals I recognized"  
"They could be masking them as legitimate signals, or even as background noise," Sylia said.  
"Sis, you should be running this. I've never been as good with computers as you are. I could take your place out there, we have the Madox suit"  
Mackie said.  
"I wouldn't give odds on that thing if it were fighting a squirrel," Priss said.  
Sylia sat down on one of the chairs and pulled off her helmet. "I suppose we could upgrade my suit with some equipment... But that wouldn't work. It'd need a larger power source, and I'd have to take off the thrusters just to fit it in," she said.  
"Well, we obviously can't have that," Priss said.  
"We could make a new one," Mackie said, leaping to his feet. "Specially made for that sort of thing. And I could use it"  
"I thought you just said you weren't good with computers," Linna said.  
Mackie's face fell. "Damn it." He sat down next to his sister.  
"The suit's a good idea. But we're going to need to find someone to use it," Sylia said.  
"Where should we start looking?" Linna asked.

Now

"What were you using the old Professor for, anyway?" Sylia asked.  
"I was feeling a bit nostalgic," Mackie said. "And I was going to take it home after I cleared out all the old data"  
"Mmm-hmmm," Sylia said.  
The old Professor--a computer in a slim, meter-tall tower case--stood in the center of the room. It was plugged into the wall, and Mackie's laptop was plugged into one of its network ports. On the screen was vix, with the text file displayed. It was a single stream of digits divided by spaces. Anyone looking at it would instantly recognize what it was: a phone number.  
"Did you trace the number yet?" Sylia asked.  
"Well, I was waiting for Nene to come in," Mackie said.  
Sylia sighed. "It doesn't take a genius to do a net-search, Mackie"  
"We could just call it, I guess," Mackie said.  
"What did you say the datestamp on the file was?" Sylia asked.  
"April 20th, 2032," Mackie replied.  
"Hmmm," Sylia said. "Hitler's birthday. The phone number might no longer be in service"  
She walked over to the console and picked up a telephone receiver. This phone was hooked to the untraceable line that Nene had set up during her first week here. She punched the number into the keypad. After a moment she heard three familiar tones and a blue screen appeared on the display.  
The number you have reached is no longer in service. No forwarding information is available. If you believe you reached this message in error, hang up and dial again.  
Have a nice day,  
ATT&T "Damn!" Mackie mumbled.  
Sylia simply frowned.

Then

The terrible heat wave of 2031 finally broke during a late August afternoon.  
Priss and Linna had been walking to Raven's garage in the sweltering heat when the storm finally broke.  
It was sudden and fierce; within moments the pavement was covered with a centimeter of water. Steam rose from the pavement which had been bombarded mercilessly by solar radiation off and on for the past five weeks. Priss and Linna ran through the rain, failing to escape getting drenched.  
By the time they got to the garage their rather revealing clothes had been soaked through. They took towels from a drooling Mackie and went into the locker room. After Linna threw her towel onto the "hidden" camera, they changed.  
In the control room, Mackie watched several moments of terrycloth induced darkness before he went back to work on the cypher. The building periodically shook with the fierceness of the thunder outside. It didn't even occur to Mackie that he shouldn't be using a computer during a thunderstorm. Industrial-grade surge protectors had become a facet of every residence and business since the twenty-teens.  
It was a matter, he thought, of making the message hard enough to decrypt,  
but not impossible. They also had to make sure that it fell into the right hands. If the Japanese government or GENOM became interested in it, their cryptologists would be able to crack the code. That meant hiding it a way that only a truly perceptive netizen/code-cracker would recognize.  
Stage 1 of the encryption code would use a simple replacement-cypher. The encryption key would be the first twenty characters of the Portuguese edition of "Before The Dawn". No one would think to try that, so only an automated code-cracking program could solve the final layer of encryption.  
That was the beauty of their plan. Only a truly gifted hacker would realize what the unencrypted message was. Like the first level of encryption, it was something that was so simple that most crackers would miss it. Mackie snickered;  
he was so clever.  
Up on the roof, Linna and Priss walked out and set up lawn chairs under the overhang. Sylia followed them, carrying a table in one hand, and a thermos of chilled barley tea in the other.  
The three Knight Sabers sat and watched the spectacular thunderstorm.  
Giant strands of electricity shot between purple clouds far in the distance.  
Every minute there was a deafening rumble of thunder. The smell of wet pavement filled their nostrils.  
Sylia remembered a line from Edmund Spenser's "Faerie Queen" about relaxing after toil. She laid back in her lawn chair and took a deep breath. In a few minutes, possibly even as far off as an hour, the horrors and pain of this world would return. But for now, just now, she could allow herself to forget.  
For now, just now, she could believe that it was good to be alive.

The brisk days of autumn had finally come. The blueness of the sky's vault was slowly fading away, being replaced by orange, red, and black at the horizon.  
A single streetlight in the parking lot reluctantly began to glow, as if it felt it was too early in the day for it to be dark.  
In this suburb of Tokyo was the St. Sappho School for Girls. It was a stark,  
squat, and unattractive building that was showing its age. Almost every window on the first floor was aglow; but all of the windows on the upper floors were dark.  
For it was on these upper floors that the students of St. Sappho's lived.  
In one of these rooms a young woman with red hair lay in the arms of the man she loved. The room was dark because it had been light when they'd started,  
and they didn't feel any need to leave their warm bed to flick the light switch.  
"Didn't you have a class at four?" the young man asked.  
"Mmmm... I didn't feel like going," the young woman replied.  
"Isn't that getting to be a bit of a habit, Nene?" the young man asked.  
"Shhh...," she said. "You're ruining the mood"  
"I've got to get going," he said. "My shift starts in a coupla hours, and I don't want to get caught by that matron of yours"  
Nene opened her green eyes and looked at her boyfriend. "Thank you for today, then"  
"You're welcome," he said, adopting a goofy grin.  
He dressed quickly and snuck out. After a few minutes Nene got up and pulled on her bathrobe. She walked over to her computer and turned it on.  
Nene opened a socket into the school's network. From there she telneted into a computer server in a rolling-pin factory in Moscow. She then telneted out of that machine into the Tokyonet. It was an old hacker's trick, but it meant that someone would have to break through two different security systems before they'd even be able to get a country suffix for her; and with the early warning alarms built into her homemade telnet client, she'd know about any attempts to ascertain her identity long before they were anywhere near success.  
She was usually long gone before they could pull a whois on the Tokyonet.  
Rover, her mail-agent, informed her that she had no messages. Nene sighed;  
no matter how popular you were, in real-life or online, an empty mailbox is always a depressing thing.  
She logged into the Newsnet group fugar. Fugar was a lame spreadsheet from the twenty-teens. Hardly anyone used it anymore, and certainly not anyone outside of the WEU. As such the Fugar group was mostly abandoned. It had since been taken up by an elite group of hackers, crackers, cybercryptologists and other assorted unsavories of the online world. It was now known colloquially as "The Old Watering Hole". It didn't even appear on the main Newsnet registry,  
which ensured that the group was bereft of curiosity seekers or, God forbid,  
someone who had a question about Fugar.

MollyCoddle, welcometo fugar, hope you survive the experience!  
Currently On: Rep Posts Att Ebb-san 12 Stargate Development Watch (worms at MIT) 0 Red 3 OnT Because I learned something today... 0 Gobo 7 CocaPepsi.us cracked wide open! 0 Wimbley 0 Welding robot into sexaroid? 0 1 Brian Mason's just this guy, you know? 1

The 1 in the attachment column caught Nene's attention. She double-clicked on it.

From: Re: Brian Mason's just this guy, you know?  
Att: 1.xif He assraped my cat.  
download attachment?

Nene rubbed her chin. It wasn't even spam; not that spammers were smart enough to get into fugar. It was either one of the regulars acting like a moron, or these was something more to it. Nene hit "y" on her keyboard and within moments the file was in the quarantine jar section of her hard-drive.  
She siced gowakehimup on the file, but it told her it wasn't a valid xif.  
She opened up the file in the byte-viewer. It obviously wasn't any type of image-file. Every image format currently in use had a small tag at the beginning of the file which specified what type of format it was in.  
Nene studied the first sixteen bytes of the file; it seemed like gibberish to her. That's saying quite a lot, since she was well-versed in reading uninterpreted data. They weren't machine code commands, so it wasn't an executable file either.  
She then widened her search over the first hundred bytes. There were at least two separate sequences which kept cropping up in the text. That would seem to indicate a text file; but why kind of text file?  
It occurred to Nene that she had no idea how large the file was. It copied onto her hard drive instantaneously, but it had been a long time since transfer speed was a good indicator of file size. howbig 1.xif 12.3 MB Nene's eyes bulged. a 12.3 MB text file would be 12897484 characters long;  
big enough to include an entire encyclopedia. What could possibly contain that much.  
Something in Nene's head clicked. Brian Mason; Brian J. Mason. He was an executive at the Tokyo office of GENOM. He was most widely reviled because he always looked so damn smug when he was being interviewed. It had been his name which caught her interest, even more than the attachment. Could this file be GENOM trade secrets?  
She logged back into fugar, and her heart began to race as she saw that the message was now gone. It had been replaced by one labeled "The group don't work 'cause the vandals took my handle". She double-clicked on the topic.  
From: Ebb-sanfajimiyaki.tknet Re: The group don't work 'cause the vandals took my handle.  
WTFS? I thought we were clear on the no-canceling policy. Fess up, who deleted the message? I can't even find it in the auto-archives. Anyone?  
Anyone?

Nene logged out and went back to the file. She realized that this could be the most important thing that she might ever do. Molotov was world-famous for what she had done with the banks in Switzerland. She would soon top herself.  
But it would take time...

Now

"Honestly Mackie," Nene said as she sat down at the console. "If you keep acting like this to avoid work, people are going to start to think you really are an idiot"  
"Priss already thinks that," Mackie replied.  
"She's not one to talk," Nene said as her hands flew across the keyboard.  
She liked this computer better than the one she had at home. She didn't have to worry about lag as it tried to keep up with her.  
"You're going into Japanese Telecom?" Mackie asked, aghast. "Shouldn't you do a Tokyonet search for it first"  
"Why should I? Go straight to the source," Nene said.  
"Yeah, but the Tokyonet search is...well... you know, LEGAL," Mackie said.  
"Oh hush, stop acting like a fat choirboy," Nene said.  
Mackie laid back in his chair and sighed. He hated when Nene got like this.  
When she was in the midst of her work, her sunny disposition vanished and she achieved a level of snarkiness that befitted an insult comic.  
"There we go," Nene said, doing the last three keystrokes with a flourish.  
There was a screen with the number, it contained 10 different entries.  
"I thought they didn't reassign a number unless it'd been vacant for five years," Mackie said.  
"These are all assigned to a MTU dorm room," Nene said. "So we're looking for Spring 2032. Ee...to... ah, here we go. Huebert J. Ebson"  
"Ebson, as in the printer company?" Mackie asked.  
"Yeah, sounds fake huh? But I think..." Nene trailed off, she stared at the screen in silence.  
"Nene?" Mackie asked. "Is something wrong"  
Nene's eyes were fixed in a hard-stare on the screen, she was chewing her lower-lip. "There's something very familiar about that name... I just can't figure out what"  
"Can you get a new number for him?" Mackie asked.  
"I can do better than that," Nene said.  
"Oh no, don't go into the Tokyo Municipal Hall of Records again!" Mackie said, squirming.  
"Aw, stop being such a wuss," Nene said as she began to crack into the system.  
"We almost got caught last time!" Mackie whined.  
"Don't blame me. You're the one who wanted to see if Priss had any venereal diseases," Nene said. "Besides, I'm a little bit better than I used to be."

Then

A smell not unlike burnt toast filled Nene's dorm room. An industrial strength cooling fan jammed the window open and sucked the smoke out before it had a chance to set off any sensors. Nene had borrowed the fan from the stoner down the hall. She'd also offered her a roach-clip, which Nene declined. "You'll burn your fingers" she said.  
Those words came back to haunt her, as she had burned her fingers four times already. Nene gritted her teeth and adjusted her reading glasses. She took a long hard look at the crudely etched wiring diagram before she made the next connection. She blew on the solder to cool it down, though it was scarcely needed. The temperature of the room, what with the open window and all, was far below that of her breath. She looked back at the diagram, specifically the series of circled numbers at the bottom which indicated steps. She was done with the third circuit board. She took an EPROM from the briefcase burner she'd "borrowed" from one of the labs and inserted it into the gaping socket on the top of the circuit board. In the center of the board was a giant slate-colored chip; it was simply labeled: CRAY-50.  
Nene cracked her knuckles and picked up the next wafer of breadboard. She picked up several baggies, all the ones with yellow stickers, and began to insert circuits into each slot. As she was doing this, the phone began to ring.  
She looked at the caller-ID panel and grimaced. Despite this, she continued to work, uninterrupted. The fourth ring was the last. A few moments later the red button on her phone lit up.  
Nene placed the last diode into the assembly. She looked back and forth between the circuit board and the diagram, checking every single circuit.  
Satisfied she picked up the soldering iron; she looked down at it and scowled.  
Yes, that was right. She'd turned it off. She flicked the switch and set it back in its holder.  
She leaned over towards her phone and hit the red button.  
"Nene, where are you? I know you're not in class," a shrill disembodied voice said.  
Nene began to solder the circuits into place and wired some connections.  
Nene was surprised that printed circuit boards hadn't eliminated the need for wiring. At least the guts of machines didn't look as ugly as they used to.  
"We got a call from the Headmistress again. You missed the last six sessions of your Calculus class. The teacher was livid, we're still not sure if she'll accept you back," the voice droned on.  
Nene set the soldering iron aside and smiled at her work. She picked up the lengths of rainbow-cable and connected the four circuit boards together.  
"After all we suffered through to get you into this school, how can you treat it...how can you treat US like this?" the voice asked.  
Nene slid each of the boards into a rack inside the metal frame she had prepared. She made the last connection; the end of the first board to the power supply. She slid the steely-blue cover onto the machine. Engraved in a fancy cursive script was the name: Skynet.  
"The headmistress has suggested we get you some help," the voice said.  
Nene finally turned to look at the phone. "Whom gods destroy," she mumbled.  
She carried the metal box over to her computer and set it down. She plugged it into the wall.  
"I think she's overreacting, but unless you do something to remedy this situation, we're pulling you out. You can go to public school like all the other kids," the voice said.  
"No problem," Nene mumbled. She connected the blue box to her computer via a UPB cable. She pressed the box's red switch, which began to glow.  
The powerful fan inside the box started up; it was even louder than the one she had in the window. She then switched on her computer.  
"Call me when you get this. We really need to talk," the voice said. There was a long pause before the hang-up signal.  
Nene brought up the file on the byte-viewer. She'd been trying to crack the sucker for months, but the time had finally come to call in a higher power.  
She had written a program called "sic" which would apply a series of encryption algorithms and key patterns to the file in an attempt to find some sort of textual pattern. It had taken her an entire month to write the program. Sadly she discovered that it would take her computer another month to find any meaningful results--and that was running every second of every day. The Skynet device could do the same thing, but within the space of a day.  
sic 1.xif -skynet Silently, the little blue box went to work.

Nene didn't take failure well. Which was rather strange since she had so much practice.  
When she was feeling depressed she liked to go sit on the roof and stare up at the stars. Looking up into the infinite and all-consuming void convinced her that her problems weren't that bad. It was a cold and overcast November night, though, so she decided to stay in bed instead.  
Skynet had run for twenty-six hours and forty-seven minutes and found absolutely nothing. There were no patterns at all--not even some strange nonsense phrases that she could get a chuckle from.  
The consensus on fugar was that the file was the cyber-successor to the Voynich Manuscript. Carefully-crafted nonsense designed to baffle cryptologists for the rest of their life. It would've been easy to just post nonsense; after a few days people would've seen it as such. But this file contained a number of repeating patterns, something which looked like syntax.  
Nene felt as if a shaft of sunlight had penetrated her head and stabbed into her brain. She sat up in bed, her hands flailing for the light switch.  
She rushed over to the computer and turned both it and skynet on.  
She knew it couldn't be a video or image file; both always started with a tag to identify them as such. It couldn't be text. In the current scheme of computer science there are only two different types of files. She had essentially proven that the file wasn't data. There was only one thing it could be.  
sic -diag sic's diagnostic mode came up. Nene had written a front-end to the program so that the program's search parameters weren't hard-wired; she could change them at will. She entered all of the assembler commands she could remember off-hand into the search boxes and saved it. She siced skynet on the file and walked back over to her bed. She picked up the latest Amelie Nothomb novel from her bedside table and started to read. She had read about five chapters when the program beeped 10 minutes later.  
She looked at the code that sic was displaying. It was an executable, all right; of that she had no doubt. She was able to read the assembler without an interpreter, and every command was perfectly worded and valid. She also noted the size, it was less than a megabyte. So her steganographic search algorithm worked. That little piece of code alone could've gotten her a degree from MIT and a corner-office at the JCIA.  
She saved the file as voynichcracked, still inside the quarantine jar,  
and cleared it for execution access.  
She felt her heart pounding as she prepared to hit the "enter" key. She really, REALLY hoped it wasn't a trojan. She'd come too damn far for something like that to happen. Finally she took a deep breath and hit enter.  
The screen went dark, an image of a blue-haired woman flashed on screen for a fraction of a second. It was followed by a simple piece of text:  
I WANT YOU Nene's glasses slid down her nose, she reached up to reposition them.  
The screen went black again, and a series of text appeared in green and red on the screen.  
If you have come this far you are a hacker of no mean ability.  
If you want to use your skills for something more,  
if you want to make the world a better place, then we can help you.  
Go to 12.74.312.424.801.6 and log in through port 17 and leave us some contact information.  
The screen went dark again, only to be replaced with some blue text a moment later.  
I hope you wrote that down, since I just erased all copies of this file from your hard-drive, including this-  
It dropped back to the command prompt. Nene didn't waste a second and brought up her telnet client.

Now  
"Huebert J. Ebson, 25 years old. Bachelor's degree in cyberlinguistics conferred by MegaTokyo University on May 1st, 2032. He began work two days later at a robotics company by the name of Synthdyne. He quit that job a year later, several days after the company was bought by GENOM," Nene said.  
"So far so good," Mackie said, looking down at the dossier.  
The Knight Sabers (and Mackie) were in conference in Sylia's apartment.  
Priss was spread out on the sofa, looking bored. Linna, attentive as always,  
sat in a chair. Sylia and Mackie sat at the table, Nene stood at its head.  
"He's registered with several temp agencies, but hasn't been able to find steady employment since then. Add to that the massive influx of software engineers let go because of the GENOM bankruptcy proceedings... I'd say he'd welcome a steady job," Nene said.  
"Why the hell are we even looking at this guy?" Priss asked. "We've got Nene, what else do we need"  
Nene started to blush a little, but quickly hid it. She was about to speak when Sylia cut her off.  
"It's always a good idea of have backup. In case Nene is hurt or decides to retire," Sylia said.  
"She's right," Linna said. "Remember last November when Nene had the flu?  
That satantic cult's boomer almost took Priss's head off"  
"I thought the only way we could retire was feet first," Priss said to Sylia.  
"He's right, Sylia, it's even in the rules," Linna said.  
"Resigning and secession are two very different things," Sylia said. "Did you honestly think I was going to kill you if you tried to leave"  
Linna and Priss exchanged sheepish glances. Sylia looked back and forth between them and let out a polite, controlled laugh. "You were saying?" Sylia said after a moment.  
Nene was staring into the distance wistfully, she quickly caught herself and looked back down at the paper. "If this man is the Ebb-san I remember, then without a doubt we should recruit him. So I vote yes," she said, and then sat down.  
"What's so impressive about this guy? It took him three times as long as Nene to crack the file," Priss said.  
"For a while there we thought no one would be able to crack it," Mackie said. "The fact that he did means he's an exceptional hacker. I vote yes, for what it's worth"  
"I vote no, this guy's a security risk," Priss said. "Besides, there's one too many guys around here as it is"  
"I think we should give him a chance," Linna said. "It looks like he needs a helping hand right now"  
"I think this is worth investigating further," Sylia said. "I'll arrange a meeting with"  
"If you don't mind, Sylia, I'd like to handle this one," Nene said.  
"Are you sure? It could be dangerous," Sylia said.  
"He's much more likely to trust his old friend Molotov instead of Sylia Stingray," Nene said.  
"All right then," Sylia said. "Good luck."

Deja vu, Nene thought to herself as she walked into the coffee shop. It was to be expected, of course. Nene'd suggested this place out of a sense of tradition. But could something be a tradition if it'd only been done once before?  
Nene slowly walked among the rows of tables, her eyes flitting to each table as she passed. When she reached the last row of tables closest to the bar, her eyes fell upon what she'd been searching for. A hardcopy of Van Neumann's "The Computer and The Brain.  
She didn't stop, and she didn't slow down. She walked up to the bar and ordered a lemon tea. She quickly looked over her shoulder to look at the table she just passed.  
Huey Ebson wasn't much to look at. He was rail thin with wiry black hair.  
He was wearing a suit. For some strange reason Nene found that hysterically funny. What was one supposed to wear when they interviewed to join a group of superheroes?  
She went over to the table and set her cup down. Huey looked up nervously.  
"Mind if I sit here?" she asked.  
"Uh, I'm waiting for someone, actually...," he said.  
Nene sat down. "What's worse than spaghetti code"  
She had completely lost him; his face had gone blank. A very long moment passed where he just stared at her. "Lo mein code," he said finally. "Because"  
Nene repeated it with him. "Because two hours after you finish a program,  
you want to write it again"  
Huey still looked confused. "Do I know you"  
"Just a moment," Nene said, and took a sip of her tea. She strung out the sip for as long as she could. Finally she heard Mackie over her ear-piece.  
"I don't detect any bugs on him," Mackie's voice said.  
"Proceed to phase two," Sylia's voice said, almost cutting Mackie off.  
"Let's not stay here," Nene said. "Let's go for a walk"  
"You haven't finished your tea, though," Huey said; he then shook his head.  
"I mean, you are the person I'm supposed to meet here, right"  
Nene simply nodded and grabbed him by the arm. They walked out of the cafe, down several streets, finally emerging in a large park. After a few moments of walking in the cold night air, Nene turned to Huey. It must have seemed that she was too pensive, or that she was deliberately trying to piss him off. If only he knew about the earpiece. But then he might figure out about the surveillance; about how a hard-suited Priss was sitting in a van less than twenty meters away.  
"Let's get some tea first," she said. "It's damn cold out here"  
They went to one of the tea kiosks, which was being staffed by Linna. The two of them didn't make eye-contact. Nene took them to a bench just across from the stand. She made sure never to leave Linna's field of vision.  
"You do know me," Nene said. "Or at least you did"  
"I think I would've remembered someone like you," Huey said.  
Nene wondered how she was supposed to take that. "You used to know me as Molotov. I knew you as Ebb-san. You used to call me Molly, though, and it kind of stuck"  
Huey started, he let out a long whistle. "I always thought that Molotov claimed to be a woman to hide his identity... I was calling you Molly to piss you off. Why did you... Oh, I see, the red hair, fire and all," he said.  
"I'm also Russian," Nene said.  
"You sent out the message? But what for?" Huey asked. "What's all this about, anyway"  
"I didn't send the message. I was the only person that answered it. Until now," Nene said.  
"You disappeared a while after the message appeared. I never really connected the two before, but..." Huey said.  
"That wasn't entirely by choice. Listen, what do you know about the Knight Sabers?"

Then

"Isn't that the weapon that Jedi use?" Nene asked.  
The woman across from Nene frowned. It took a few moments for Nene to remember where she'd seen her before. The image that had appeared for a split-  
second as she executed the file.  
They were sitting in a coffeshop in Yokohama. Nene had been there for almost two hours, pretending to read The Mythical Man-Month while swilling down an unhealthy amount of caffeine and sugar. When the woman finally arrived, Nene was jittering so much that she almost fell off her chair.  
"The Knight Sabers are engaged in a war against GENOM," the woman said.  
"You're not talking about those guys who are prancing around in Ultraman costumes and beating up Boomers, are you?" Nene said.  
The woman shook her head. "I think I've made a mistake," she said. "Good day." She began to rise.  
"I'm Molotov," Nene said, simply. The jittering was gone, she sat up straight and folded her arms on the table.  
The woman stopped mid-crouch, then sat down again. She looked at Nene for a full minute in silence; appraising her. "Is that so"  
"I thought that might get your attention. I'm interested in why the Knight Sabers would need someone like me," Nene said. "I'm not exactly a soldier girl"  
"I suppose you can prove you're Molotov?" the woman said.  
"The fact that I cracked your code is all the proof I need," Nene said.  
"Then can you explain why someone calling themselves Molotov released the financial records of three Communist organizations in Asia?" the woman asked.  
"I didn't take the name because of my political leanings. Molotov was a Russian you didn't want to mess with. I'm the same," Nene said. "And to answer your question, all three of those organizations were sponsors of terrorism"  
"So you took it upon yourself to crack into the files of all the banks in Switzerland, and reveal to the whole world who was keeping their money there"  
the woman said. "Many countries broke off relations after that. There was almost a war"  
"But the Swiss government eventually had to freeze the funds of every terrorist organization that was using their country as a piggy bank. How many lives were saved, how many wars were averted because of what I did?" Nene said.  
"But why did you feel you had the right to do that?" the woman asked.  
"Because I was the only one who could," Nene said. "I'm not content to let the world fall to pieces around me. If there's something I can do to fix things--I'll do it"  
The woman sat back and stirred her tea, she stared at Nene for a few moments, looking thoughtful. "I think we understand each other, Nene Romanova."

On the screen was a large man, his black-glove clad hands were clenching around the throat of a bearded, unwashed transient. After a moment the large man's grip faltered, and he held up his two hands, curved into claws in pain. The bearded man took advantage of the lull in his strangling and ran away. The large man yelled after him.  
A voice spoke over the scene. "Is arthritis pain stopping you from doing the things you enjoy"  
The flashing of the TV was all that lit the three figures in the room.  
One of them, a young woman with unruly brown hair, was laying on the couch.  
Sitting in the chair was a boy about Nene's age, whose hair and features identified him as Sylia's brother. On the floor was another young woman with an athletic build, her hair was that wonderful silky black that only Japanese people seemed to posses; part of it was bunched behind a red headband. All three of them were fast asleep.  
"Quite diligent, aren't they?" Nene asked. "Maybe there was a CO leak"  
They were standing in the living room of one of the Knight Saber's apartment. Nene was assuming it was Sylia's. She didn't think being a Knight Saber paid well enough to afford these digs.  
"It -is- three in the morning," Sylia said. She walked over to the one that Nene assumed was her brother and started to nudge him awake.  
Nene switched off the TV and sat in the one unoccupied armchair. Wondering why the headband-clad Japanese girl hadn't sat there. Within moments all of them were awake. There pairs of sleepy eyes regarded her with interest.  
"This is Nene Romanova," Sylia said. "If all goes well, she'll be fighting besides us in the coming months"  
"Very pleased to meet you all," Nene said. She added a girlish giggle to make known her nervousness.  
"You're a hacker?" the brown-haired one said. "I thought the only girl hackers were the ones who could crack a mirror by looking at it"  
It took a moment for Nene to realize that Priss wasn't talking about cracking into a mirror-site. She'd been out of the real world for too long. She also realized that the gravely-voiced girl had just given her a back-handed compliment.  
"Yeah, she's right, you sure are cute," said the Japanese girl in a perky voice. Now that her eyes were open, Nene realized that they were blue. Mixed heritage, then; or contacts.  
Nene blushed a little, and hated herself for it. She was complimented so rarely in life that it was hard to control her emotions. "Thank you," she said.  
She must try to keep her hard-boiled hacker persona. They wouldn't take her seriously, otherwise. So, no more slip-ups. "But I'm not here because of my looks. I'm the great hacker Molotov"  
"Yeah," the brown-haired woman said. "We know"  
"What?" Nene blurted out. "How could you"  
"I was bugged," Sylia said. "They heard the entire conversation"  
Nene sank down into her chair. Of course; damn it, why hadn't she realized?  
Had she expected that the leader of the Knight Sabers would go in without some kind of backup? They probably had snipers on the roofs of buildings across the way. Of course, if this lot was an indication, there were fair odds they'd have fallen asleep at their post.  
"Now, there on the floor in front of you is Linna Yamazaki, melee specialist," Sylia said.  
Linna jumped to her feet and bowed her head to Nene. She gave Nene an enthusiastic smile. "Glad to meet you, Nene"  
"Likewise," Nene said.  
"Next to me is Priss Asagiri, demolitions and ranged combat," Sylia said.  
The brown-haired woman grumbled something that sounded remotely like a hello. Nene smiled inwardly at the name; Priss certainly didn't -seem- like a morning person.  
"I'm Mackie," Sylia's brother said. Nene wonder if he piped up because he was afraid his sister wasn't going to mention him. "Miscellaneous"  
"Now that we've all met, I suggest we get some sleep. I'm taking Nene over to the garage first-thing tomorrow so we can start to build her suit," Sylia said. "But before that, is anyone up for some dinner"  
Four hands immediately sprang up.

Now

Nene found Sylia in the control room. She had been afraid that Sylia'd already left. All the lights in the place were off, except for this one.  
"I thought I'd find you here," Nene said.  
Sylia didn't look up from the console. "Did you need something, Nene-chan"  
Nene walked over and looked at the screen that seemed to have entranced Sylia. "Still programming the trials, huh"  
"I want to get them all in one shot," Sylia said. "That way we can test how he performs under duress"  
"I think the strength tests are a waste," Nene said. "The guy's a toothpick, I doubt he could benchpress the MegaTokyo telephone directory"  
"Something on your mind, Nene?" Sylia said, still not looking up from her rapid coding.  
"Yeah," she said, and hesitated. "Something you said earlier got me thinking.  
"Your retirement?" Sylia said.  
Nene started; sometimes Sylia was capable of the greatest insight. It was strange since she seemed so distant and cold sometimes.  
"I never really gave any thought to what I'd do after," Nene said. "But what if we win? It looks like we might just have, what with GENOM closing down and all"  
"That will mean that what GENOM represents will only be more widespread"  
Sylia said. "Though it will be easier now that their power isn't consolidated"  
"But we were created to counter GENOM," Nene said. "What happens if we're not needed anymore? Certainly you've thought about that, Sylia. Aren't you the least bit interested in continuing your father's work"  
Sylia finally looked up from the console. One of the few times Nene ever saw emotion in Sylia's eyes was when they were talking about Pa Stingray. Nene was disappointed when her mentor changed the subject.  
"I'll keep my promise, Nene, if you want to move on. I'll get you into MIT,  
though I doubt you need the help; and I'll pay your tuition," Sylia said.  
"I'm not saying I'm going to do that," Nene said, flapping her hands as if to dismiss the notion.  
"Then what are you saying?" Sylia said.  
"It's just... maybe it's time we started searching for life beyond the Knight Sabers," Nene said. "I'm sure there's something out there"  
Sylia turned back to her screen. "You're welcome here as long as you wish to stay," she said.  
Nene felt a warmness inside her chest, and let out a sigh. Sylia always knew just what to say. And for the first time, Nene started to think about that, and worry.

Then

Nene shifted in her chair; it was starting to get uncomfortable. She looked at her watch and realized that she'd been at the terminal for 8 hours. She stood up and stretched. "I think we should take a break," she said.  
"Not on my account, I hope," Sylia said. "I could do this for another 10 hours"  
Nene walked across the control room and nudged the sleeping form of Mackie with her foot. "Hey Mackie, food ka"  
Mackie sat up and looked around in bewilderment. He'd obviously gotten to one of the deeper stages of sleep. He didn't seem to know where he was.  
"Are you done? What time is it?" Mackie said.  
"It's just a little after six," Nene said. "We're still working on the subprocessors"  
Nene walked back over to the terminal and saved her work in the CAD program. Sylia flicked a switch which turned the Professor off. That was what they called the supercomputer that ran all their systems here in Knight Sabers HQ. According to Sylia, when Mackie was taking the computer out of its box he misread the manufacturer's name on the side of the tower's case. The supercomputer had been made by a company called Processor Technology, but Mackie had read it as "Professor Technology". The name had stuck ever since, much to Mackie's chargin.  
The three of them continued their conversation as they made their way out of Raven's Garage.  
"I'm still worried about the cooling system, though," Nene said. "Are you sure it's going to be enough? I think that fluid immersion wouldn't be out of the question. It might make me feel a little bloated, though." she said with a smile.  
"You're still thinking of the chips as electronic," Sylia said. "Optical nanoprocessors don't produce as much heat, so the fans we've installed should do the job well"  
Nene grumbled. "I still think optical-cybernetics is witchcraft"  
As they reached the car, Nene opened the passenger side's door and prepared to get in. Mackie walked up next to her and started to squirm.  
"Sit in the back!" Nene said.  
Mackie scowled and walked around the car.  
Traffic was light for six o'clock on a weeknight. After about twenty minutes Nene heard snoring from the back seat.  
"About what we talked about before," Sylia said. "About cutting ties"  
"Right. I haven't been back to the old watering hole since we had that conversation," Nene said.  
"That isn't what I meant," Sylia said.  
Nene let out a long sigh through a small gap in her lips, it lifted a tuft of her red hair for a few moments. "Is it really necessary"  
"There's a reason it's one of our rules," Sylia said. "Your friends might notice something, but a significant other certainly would"  
"Maybe we could tell him," Nene said. "I think Ben can be trusted"  
"There are only two people outside of this organization that know of our existence. Well, three if you count Mackie," Sylia said.  
Nene smiled glibly. "You mean Mackie isn't part of the organization"  
"It's sort of like he came with the place," Sylia said, returning the smile, which she quickly dropped. "And how well do you really know this man?  
He's a med student going out with a 17-year-old. That doesn't exactly sound moral to me"  
Nene shrugged. "Older men like younger women, and younger women like older men. It's just the way it works"  
"He might just lose interest when you stop being jail-bait, Nene," Sylia said.  
"Don't say that about him!" Nene said, her voice hissing from her attempt to not awaken Mackie. "He's a good man; he wants to help the world. Besides"  
Nene said, looking straight-forward, her eyes a little misty. "I love him. I.  
I really do. We've been together long enough to know that it isn't just infatuation. It isn't about the sex"  
Sylia started to veer into the other lane, but quickly caught herself.  
"If you do truly love him, then that's just more of a reason to let him go"  
Sylia said. "If we let him in on the secret, it will be a great burden to him.  
If he knew who we are it could put him in terrible jeopardy. Trust me. I know"  
Sylia snapped on the car's headlights. "You can always opt-out"  
"I can't believe that I'm selfish enough to take you up on that," Nene said.  
"This life isn't for everyone, Nene," Sylia said.  
"Yes, but it is for me," Nene said.  
"You can't have both. You need to choose," Sylia said.  
"Yeah, I guess you're right. But how do you tell the person you love most in the world that you never want to see them again"  
Nene looked beautiful in the sunlight. When she was lit by the light of the sun, Nene's red hair was like fire, and her green eyes seemed to glow. Her alabaster skin was smooth and flawless. Ben smiled and took a step towards her.  
"It's great to see you, honey! Where've you been all week?" he asked.  
This was when he noticed that Nene was avoiding his gaze. Her mouth had changed from a smile to a grimace. She looked as if she were in great pain. "Nene,  
what's wrong"  
Nene didn't say anything, she finally looked her lover in the eyes. "We need to talk"  
Ben felt like he'd been stabbed in the chest with an icicle. "Oh? Well,  
come in, please." Nene walked across the threshold. "I was just about to leave for my shift. Do you want some breakfast"  
"No thanks," Nene said somberly.  
Ben looked at her for a moment, concerned. After a moment he walked to the kitchen, Nene following. He got a loaf of bread out of a cabinet and stuck two slices in the chrome toaster. A red light began to shift back and forth on its black front panel.  
"Nene, what's the matter? I've never seen you this miserable," Ben said.  
Nene sat down at the table. "This isn't easy for me to say. And it's certainly not going to be easy for you to hear"  
She was staring at the table, again refusing to meet his gaze. Ben sat down next to her, and lifted her chin up. She still didn't look at him.  
"What is it?" Ben asked.  
"I don't think we should see each other anymore," Nene said.  
Ben felt himself jump involuntarily. Nene obviously noticed it since her chair backed a few centimeters away from his. "Wha... Why do you want to break up"  
"I think we need to get on with our lives," Nene said. "We don't have any future"  
"Nene, what brought this on? I mean, I know we guys are known for not picking up on things... But I never got the feeling that you were unhappy with me," Ben said.  
"I'm not!" Nene said, her voice cracking, tears were brimming in the wells of her eyes. "There's nothing more I want in this world then to spend the rest of my life with you..." she said. "But I can't"  
"Why can't you? Is it your parents?" Ben said. "I told you, we just need to wait a couple more years, and they'll be all right with it"  
"There are times when what we want to do, and what must be done come in conflict. This is one of these times," Nene said.  
"Nene, I'm not too old for you. I told you before, in ten years no one will care," Ben said.  
"I'd like to be able to tell you why I need to do this," Nene said, the first tear trickling down her left cheek. "I want to make you understand what it took to make me say this to you... But I can't"  
"Nene," Ben said and took her hand. His eyes were full of concern. "Are you in danger"  
"The entire world is in danger, Ben..." Nene said, trailing off into thoughtful silence. "Ben, do you trust me"  
Ben thought about for a moment, then realized the truth. "Yes, Nene. I do trust you"  
"Then trust in my judgment. I need you to believe that what I'm doing is best for both our sakes. I need you to trust me to do what's right. And I need you to trust that my words are sincere when I say that I do still love you"  
Nene said.  
"That's a lot to ask of me, Nene," Ben said.  
The two stared at each other for a long time. Suddenly the toast popped up from the toaster. A robotic voice from it said: "Bread toasted, by your command"  
"You seem to be taking this extremely well," Nene said.  
"Yeah, that's strange. It's just... Well, I believe you. You're very easy to read, Nene, no offense. But I think you're telling me the truth," Ben said.  
"So you'll let me go?" Nene said.  
Ben looked into the deep verdant pools of her eyes, which seemed to glow even in this dim kitchen. His entire chest had gone cold, and he felt like he was falling as he realized the difficult days ahead; the months and years that he would spend...without her. It was an overwhelming sadness, the worst he'd ever felt.  
"I hope this is worth it," he said through teeth clenched in pain.  
"I do too," Nene said, almost silently.  
She stood up, and turned her back to him. Ben fought the urge to stand;  
his legs were aching to straighten. His own nervous system was fighting against him.  
She had gotten to the door when he couldn't control himself anymore. "Nene"  
he said, sobbing. "Don't go. DON'T GO"  
Nene stopped before the door, still not turning around, her chin rested on her chest. He saw a single prismatic tear fall to the carpet. Her hand shot out, reaching for the doorknob; but once she grabbed it, she didn't turn it.  
"I'm glad I knew you," she said. Then she opened the door, and walked out of his life.

Now

Huey dodged the holographic tentacle, but the computer recorded a hit. A most palatable hit, Nene noted. She stared through the glass to the floor ten feet below, where Huey seemed to be fighting for his life. She had been in his place a lifetime ago--or at least it seemed a lifetime--but now she was one of the gods who sat on high and would later decide if Ebson would be allowed to join their ranks. Nene sat back in her chair and felt smug. It was great to belong.  
"He seems to possess good physical strength," Sylia said. "Though his manual dexterity leaves something to be desired"  
"He could join one of my classes," Linna said. "I'm sure he'd get better really quick"  
"Impressive response time, though," Nene said, balancing a pen between the palm of her hand and the console. "Almost as good as me"  
"And his targeting is just about as bad," Priss noted.  
"He does seem quick on his feet," Linna said.  
Nene let the pen slip to the floor. "So Linna, when's the wedding"  
"Wh-what?" Linna asked.  
"Well you seem to be in love with this guy; you don't seem to have a bad word to say about him," Nene said. "Why dontcha marry him"  
"Careful Nene," Mackie said. "You're starting to act like Priss again"  
"Screw you," Priss said, stomping on Mackie's foot.  
"Well, I'll admit he isn't that fit. But we're not looking for another fighter," Linna said.  
Nene sat up. "That reminds me, Sylia, how are you planning to test his computer skills"  
"I planned to use the same set of trials I had you perform," Sylia said.  
Nene scowled. That had been some of the dullest and most pedantic work she'd ever done. She had to break into 20 different systems, one after the other. Every one had some new sort of trap set in to stop her. "I think I have a better idea," Nene said.

"Corewar 2025?" Huey asked, mildly interested.  
"Yeah," Nene said. "If you're not chicken"  
"What's Corewar?" Linna asked.  
Priss looked on in passioned disinterest.  
"Corewar 2025," Nene corrected her. "It's the ultimate test of cracking skill"  
"You see what you do," Mackie interjected. "Is you take two smart terminals and you connect them together using a single Cat-9 cable. That way the only thing they're connected to is each other. On each terminal you make sure there's nothing more than a text editor, a compiler of a randomly chosen language, a software firewall, an up-to-date AV/AW program, and a telnet client. The first person to disable the other person's terminal wins"  
"How sickeningly nerdy," Priss growled.  
"That's rather unorthodox, isn't it? Huey said.  
Nene gave him a strange look. Since when was there an orthodoxy on the entry requirements for a superhero team? "It sounds like you're scared, Ebb-san.  
Come on, I know you've always wanted to take a crack at me"  
"I suppose that's true," Huey said. "I'm game"  
It took Mackie nearly two hours to set everything up. Luckily there were a couple of spare smart terminals in the basement. It was always necessary to have backups. Priss wasn't exactly computer literate, or able to contain her rage.  
They set up a couple of tables in the control room. The two terminals were back to back; it was a rule that the two contenders couldn't see what the other was doing. When everything was set up Nene and Ebb-san stood facing each other,  
equidistant from each console.  
They both banged a clenched fist against their chest and uttered: "Those who are about to crash salute you." They then rushed to their terminals.  
Nene tapped her foot impatiently as she waited for the computer to boot up. This system must've been ten years old; which she supposed was fitting considering the name of the game. Finally she came to the command prompt.  
Remote user requesting access. Grant? (y/n)  
Nene smirked; this was newbie bait. She certainly wasn't going to fall for it. She was about to hit n and then stopped. What if that's what he was expecting her to do? She hit alt-shift and another uxterm opened.  
kill process id 1024 The other uxterm vanished. Nene grinned and opened up three other uxterms and began different tasks in each one of them. She brought up the /cmp/ directory and lsed it. A C compiler, she thought to herself. Where the hell did Mackie manage to find one of those? Luckily she knew E, so she essentially knew C as well. She opened vix and started to write a program, tabbing over to another uxterm whenever she needed to look at the man pages for the C compiler.  
There was a program that she had written by accident during her first week of learning E. What was great about it was that the program used the computer's clockspeed against it. The faster the computer, the faster the program would crash it. It was also such a simple program that no AV/AW program could catch it. The only way someone would even known they were being attacked was if they checked their disk quotas or process list. She got rid of the latter by giving a name similar to a process that showed up on the system.  
She tabbed over to another uxterm and did a whatsup. There were three processes she didn't recognize. She wasn't familiar with this particular make of operating system, so it was possible that they were esoteric names for near-universal processes. But she wasn't going to take that chance; she killed them all.  
That done, she did a whoson. Naturally, there was another user on, this one called "blowme". Nene shut him out of the system. When a user was logged in to your computer, and you knew about it, you could easily do as much damage to them as they could to you. But she wasn't quite ready. She ran another whatsup and, content that he hadn't left a parting gift, got back to her program.  
She was done. The little program only took up 16 lines. She was convinced that she could pair it down even further, but that didn't really matter at this point. She compiled it and ran the executable. She let it run for five second and then killed it. She checked her disk quota: it had written 200 megabytes in the few seconds that it ran. That meant it would only take about five minutes for it to crash Ebb-san's computer.  
"How you doing over there, Ebby?" she asked.  
"Just fine, Molly; Just like old times, ne?" Huey said.  
Nene whosoned again, he was now there as "yousuckrimjobqueen". Nene clucked her tongue. She hoped she hadn't been that crude back in her freelance cyberterrorism days.  
The telnet client that was on this computer--that was on the Knight Saber's computers--was one that Nene herself had written almost five years ago. As such,  
there were many hidden features, and traps, in it. For instance, Nene could take control of any computer that was using it through a nasty backdoor algorithm she'd written. With a single keystroke she was inside of Ebb-san's terminal.  
She put the file on Ebb-san's computer, cleared it for execution, and ran it. She brought up the process table and smirked. He'd never notice it. Although the names were similar, the process table was, by default, listed by process number instead of name. Since they weren't listed together, it was unlikely he'd notice that he had two copies of the same process running.  
She shut the telnet program down, worrying that he might get wise and use it against her. She went back to vix and started to work on a security program.  
This would take slightly longer, but since it was going to kill everyone except the person with her User-ID, it would be fairly simple to program.  
Every once in a while she tabbed over to one of the open uxterms and swatted flies. Ebb-san apparently thought about deviant sex quite a lot. Nene wondered what squicking was supposed to be.  
About seven minutes had passed before Nene finished the program. She ran it and did the usual house-cleaning chores; deleting files and such. She noticed that Ebb-san had managed to break into her computer again. She should work on a password randomizer next. Set it for every 3 seconds or so. Nene snuck into his terminal through the telnet program again.  
She brought up the processes and saw that her program had been killed. A ls confirmed it wasn't in the directory anymore. She was about to put it back on Ebb-san's machine when the telnet window blinked. Nene got a bad feeling in her gut. Programs often blink like that when the computer can't keep up with what the program was doing; but it never would have happened with something as simple as Nene's program. The blink was a warning she'd built into the client.  
It meant that someone had followed the telnet stream back into her terminal. Ebb-san had obviously found the hijack function. And the mass-murderer program she'd just written wouldn't catch him either. She quickly killed the telnet program; luckily he hadn't been on long enough to.  
Nene remembered something. Moments before it blinked, the sound from Ebb-san's keyboard became louder; he'd been typing faster than she'd ever heard anyone type before. She went to tab into one of the uxterms and a window popped up.  
Shutdown Process Activated. Shutdown in... 005 seconds  
Nene almost hit tab again, but stopped just in time. He'd rebound her keys. Jesus Christ, how had he managed to do that in so little time? He must've been writing the malware ever since he sat down.  
Nene reluctantly moved her hand over to the trackball and clicked on another uxterm. She tried to type: "abort", but she got "qwert". That son of a bitch! She didn't have a choice any longer, she hit meta-a and said a quick prayer. The countdown stopped and the window disappeared.  
Nene gulped. He had spared her. That felt even worse than losing. He thought so little of her abilities that he showed mercy. Or else he was toying with her. Either way, it was pretty bad.  
She quickly tested each of the letter keys. It took her a whole minute before she was able to df.  
Oh damn. Oh DAMN. There was less than 1000 blocks of disk space left,  
and those were certainly eaten up in the space of time it took to display the message. The son of a bitch had used her own program against her! Damn it,  
why hadn't SHE thought of rebinding HIS keys?  
It wouldn't be long now. The first time the system tried to swap... Ah,  
here it was.  
Out of memory. Out of memory. Out of memory.  
It was frozen. The program would crash in a few moments itself, since it didn't have any more disk space to write to. She liked that, it was self-terminating. So few mechanical things could do that these days.  
Nene pushed away from the table, the wheels on her chair carrying her across the room, she swiveled and faced the back of her opponent. After a moment he turned to face her.  
"Not that I need to tell you," Nene said. "But you won"  
"Good to hear it from you," Huey said, smiling.  
Nene shook her head. "You kiss your mother with that mouth"  
Huey grinned sheepishly.  
Priss walked over and shook his hand. "The queen is dead, long live the king"  
Linna placed her hands on Nene's shoulders. "It's all right, Nene. You survived a whole 12 minutes"  
She sounded apologetic--but she obviously didn't realize that 12 minutes was extraordinarily good when they were playing at this level.  
Nene swiveled away from them; so they didn't see the flash of murderous hatred that crossed her face.

Then

A wise man once said, on the subject of earthborn purgatories, that the suburb of Tokyo known as Saitama was: "hell with waterslides.  
In the outer ring of this city was a small house of modern construction.  
It was in a neighborhood that was home to many foreigners. Many residents of Saitama spoke in hushed and angry tones about the "gaijin invasion" which had taken place in the long and difficult years after the Kanto earthquake.  
One of those families was the Romanovs, who has left their ancestral city of Moscow to find better opportunities abroad. At least that's what they told people. Petrov Romanov was a conscientious man who wanted nothing to do with the EEU--or the New Warsaw Pact, as many believed it should be called.  
Because of his choices, his daughter had grown up speaking English as a first language, Japanese as a second, and Russian as a distant third. The fact that she had a stout Russian soul was a mystery to her parents.  
As Sylia strolled up the front walk, she was amazed at the contrast. The green grass, offset by the deep blue sky, seemed alien to her. She'd lived in MegaTokyo for almost her entire life--she had started to believe that everything was as crude and ugly. She felt strange being in Nene's world--did Nene feel as alienated in hers?  
"This is not going to be pretty," Nene said somberly. "You're familiar with the Russian temper, I take it"  
"Let me do the talking," Sylia said. "They'll be more inclined to listen if it comes from a stranger"  
Nene shrugged. They walked onto the front porch and Sylia rang the bell.  
After a moment a man with dark hark and a moustache answered.  
"Nene!" he said, dimples appearing in his cheeks as he smiled. His eyes slid over to Sylia and his face fell. "What did she do this time"  
"It's nothing bad, I assure you Mr. Romanov," Sylia said.  
"Are you from the school?" Nene's dad asked, his brow furrowing in confusion.  
"No, I'm not. Could we come in? We have much to discuss," Sylia said.  
"Of course, please," Nene's dad said, moving out of the way so they could enter.  
They walked through a small hallway and came into the living room. There were several pieces of Byzantine art hanging on the walls, but aside from that nothing that spoke of this being a Russian house. Sylia didn't know what she'd expected; maybe a couple of those Russian dolls, perhaps?  
A woman of about the same age as Nene's dad was standing by the stove in the kitchen, making a pot of tea. She was obviously Nene's mother; she had the same crimson hair, the same deep green eyes. She looked up and a bright smile crossed her face. She also had her daughter's smile.  
"Nene!" she yelled, she ran across the room and hugged her daughter. Nene looked a little embarrassed, but warmly returned the embrace. "It's so wonderful to see you dear"  
Sylia allowed herself a light smile. She guessed Nene didn't come back much. She also couldn't deny that felt a wonderful warm feeling coursing through her chest. It must be nice having living parents.  
"I'm afraid I didn't catch your name, Miss-" Nene's father said.  
"Stingray. Sylia Stingray," Sylia said.  
"Well, have a seat Miss Stingray," Nene's dad said, motioning to one of the couches. Sylia sat on one of the love seats, the Family Romanov sat together on the longer couch, Nene between them.  
"I'm a recruiter for the ADPolice," Sylia said. "Nene's affinity with computers has convinced us that she would be a great asset to our team"  
Nene's eyebrows rose in surprise, but her face quickly went blank. Very good reaction time, Sylia noted to herself.  
"Well we're glad to hear that," Nene's mother said. "But you've got to wait another four years before our daughter will be looking for work"  
"I believe that Nene's natural talents don't require any advanced education. In fact, I think she's wasting her time at school as it is," Sylia said.  
Nene looked uncomfortable. Sylia guessed that she was being a little too blunt, but it was important to get it out in the open.  
"I don't know how they do things in your country, Miss Stingray... Which would be what, by the way?" Nene's dad said.  
"The Stingray's hail from Bolivia, originally," Sylia said.  
"Anyway, we believe in the importance of education," Nene's dad said.  
"Yes, but structured schooling isn't for everyone," Sylia said. "The purpose of school is to get a job, is it not? We're offering young Nene employment for life"  
"If I could get through school, so can my daughter," Nene's mom said.  
"You must've seen her discipline reports. She's chaffing in the position that you put her in," Sylia said.  
"I don't like you questioning our parenting, Miss Stingray!" Nene's father said. His voice hadn't raised at all, in fact it was lower than usual. But it was harsh and deadly.  
"If I didn't think you were good parents, I wouldn't have bothered speaking to you. In eight months she can choose to leave of her own accord and follow me. But we both believe that it's important that she have your support in this"  
Sylia said.  
Nene's father shook his head. "All this nebulous talk of the value of education doesn't really matter. I'm not sure I want my daughter living and working in MegaTokyo. It's a very dangerous place"  
"For that matter, where would she live?" Nene's mother said with concern.  
"Her salary will be able to provide comfortable accommodations. Especially with our connections," Sylia said. "As for her safety, I swear to you that I'll look after her. She won't come to any harm"  
Nene shot her a look that said: yeah, right.  
"And how do we know that we can trust you?" Nene's father said.  
"You don't. But your daughter does. Of course you need to wonder if that's enough," Sylia said.  
"It isn't," Nene's father said. "She's not doing it, and that's final"  
"Petrov," Nene's mother said.  
"I'm not talking about this, Esmeralda," Nene's father said.  
"Then I suppose there's no reason for me to remain," Sylia said, rising from the couch. "But before I leave, I'd like to compliment you on the raising of your daughter. She's a fine young woman. I'm sure she'll make you proud,  
no matter what path she chooses." Even though no one present was Japanese, Sylia bowed and walked out into the foyer.  
She heard rushed footsteps behind her, when she reached the door she turned around and saw Nene.  
"I'll talk to them. They'll have to give in eventually," Nene said.  
"I wouldn't be so sure about that, Nene. They worry about you. Are you sure this is the life you want to live? It's not too late to back out"  
Nene hesitated. Sylia smiled inwardly. That was a sign of true maturity.  
"I think what we're doing is worth the risk," Nene said.  
"Then by all means, badger them into acceptance. I'll send a car for you when you want to leave," Sylia said.  
"No thanks, I'll take the train and meet you back at Raven's," Nene said.  
"As you wish," Sylia said.  
"By the way, what's all this about ADPolice?" Nene said with a cockeyed look.  
"Oh," Sylia said, smiling lightly. "Did I forget to mention that?"

The dawn of Nene's first day at ADPolice found her waking up staring at the ceiling of her apartment. Her apartment. HER apartment. Her APARTMENT.  
Nene felt a rush whenever those words crossed her synapses whose magnitude wasn't diminished no matter how many times she thought it.  
No longer was she relegated to a room or a dorm room. She had her own apartment, and a job, and a vocation. Nene leapt giddily from her bed and rushed into the bathroom. She sang as the hot water of the shower pounded down on her. Today was going to be a great day, she knew. The best of her life.  
She was still humming as she stood on the platform in the train station.  
Vision songs had been going through her head all morning, and she wasn't able to stop them from escaping to the outside world. Nene considered Vision's songs to be a little too cheery, but she liked the composition of them anyway.  
The lyrics were the most thoughtful she'd heard since Alfred Yankovic died.  
Priss really hated her music, which ratcheted up Vision's reputation in Nene's estimation.  
She finally came out of the train station at Ikebukuro and craned her neck to take in the immensity of the ADPolice building. It was interesting that the best known structures of MegaTokyo were the GENOM tower and ADPolice headquarters. It really made MegaTokyo feel like a battleground.  
Nene was given a security badge at the front desk and took an elevator up to the 45th floor. A girl about the same age as Nene showed her to her desk and gave her the lay of the land. This girl, Naoko, wasn't Nene's supervisor,  
but had the same job. As such she didn't sugarcoat it for her.  
"Althought we're called Communication Specialists we only get to work the switchboard, at most, two hours a day. Most of the other time we have to enter data into the database and handle crap that's deemed 'too sensitive' for the secretarial pool," Naoko said.  
"But I don't understand," Nene said. "I took the test and have a badge and everything, so why's a police officer doing this stuff"  
"Surplus to requirements, sadly. Of course they're always looking for beat cops, if you want a transfer," Naoko said drolly.  
"No, no, this is fine," Nene said, smiling nervously.  
"Good, I'll leave you to it, then," Naoko said and walked off.  
Three hours later Nene was bored out of her mind. She didn't have a switchboard shift that day, so she was stuck doing the 'crap' that Naoko mentioned. After a few minutes she took out her Layer-10 player and started listening to The Dylan Revolution. It was only after it occurred to her that she was paying attention to the lyrics that she realized how mindless her work was.  
Nene was sullen and disheartened when she walked out of ADPolice HQ that evening. Were all things of the adult world like this? Maybe she should've cherished her childhood more.  
She was waiting for the walk signal to cross over to the train station when a familiar black car pulled up. Nene leaned down and tried to peer in the smoked glass windows. After a moment they rolled down, Sylia was sitting in the driver's seat.  
"Hard day, Nene-chan?" Sylia asked.  
"I don't know how useful I'm going to be," Nene said.  
"Don't worry, I still have friends on the inside. You'll have access to everything you need," Sylia said. "Get in"  
Nene pulled the door open and slid into the shotgun seat. Sylia was off like a shot, Nene clumsily tried to fasten her seatbelt.  
"To cheer you up, I'll take you to dinner. You ever have lemon linguine with real chicken?" Sylia asked.  
"I haven't had it with real lemons," Nene said.  
Sylia chortled. "But first, we're going to swing by the garage," Sylia said, smiling. "There's something there I think you'll want to see."

There it stood in all its majesty. A marvel of mechanical and cybernetic engineering. Based on the abandoned GENOM prototype that was the ancestor of each of the Knight Saber's suits, it also housed a supercomputer that could put a Cray-100 to shame. Not everyone was in awe of it, though.  
"Pink? Why the hell didn't you just put Hello Kitty stickers on it?" Priss growled.  
"They would burn off," Nene said innocently. "Besides, I LIKE pink"  
"It's a bit much," Linna said. "But I guess we could use a bit of color"  
"I can't wait to try it out," Nene said, clouding up the window of the console room as she leaned against it, looking at her suit in the holographic chamber below.  
"You know, there's a reason it's down there," Sylia said.  
It took a moment for Nene to realize what she meant. She straightened up and tried to hide her giddiness. "You mean it"  
"Go ahead," Sylia said. "You'll have to change first, though"  
Nene's shoes left skid marks as she ran off to the changing room. "Umm, could you guys go somewhere else?" Mackie asked, looking wantonly at a nearby computer terminal.  
Priss stomped on his foot, and he howled in pain.  
"We've really got to get rid of that camera," Linna noted.

Now

Nene lay in bed and stared at the dark ceiling of her apartment. She hadn't felt so depressed since... Well, since before she joined the Knight Sabers. But her feelings of depressions were supplanted by nervousness and a small amount of fear. There was something really wrong with Ebb-san. He was a threat to them;  
she felt it in her bones. Perhaps she just hated losing... No, that wasn't it.  
Ebb-san had never been that good. NEVER.  
Nene reached over and pressed a touch-panel on her bedside table. The lights came up. She walked over to her computer and sat down. After she booted up she brought up her telnet program and logged into a mainframe in a rolling-pin factory in Moscow. And for the first time in two years she entered the newsnet of Tokyonet.  
Nene was surprised that she never felt the urge to come back here before.  
But fugar was part of the sullen teenager that she used to be. Knight Saber Nene was a very different girl. A very different WOMAN.  
fugar was empty. Not only was no one logged-in, there weren't any posts. Nene felt nostalgia's bitter edge. So they had all moved on with their lives as well. But still, no one had found out about this place? No one had come to replace them?  
The filter was set to only show messages from the past month, so she reset it for the previous six months; no messages appeared. Nene wrinkled her nose.  
She set the filter for a year, and finally some messages appeared. The last message was on March 20th, 2033.  
She spent the next thirty minutes reading through the messages. There was no talk of abandoning the group. Also, the messages didn't pieter-out either.  
From the 15th to the 20th of March there were 30 posts, each one coming from someone Nene remembered.  
Nene felt a sinking feeling in her chest. She'd come to fugar to make herself feel better; but she realized that her instincts--or her pride--had put her on the right course. She dressed in less than a minute and rushed out the door.  
The streets of MegaTokyo were deserted--as they usually were at four in the morning. Nene was certain that she was quite an unusual sight on her pink scooter. She felt her blood run hot in her veins. This was a very different kind of exhilaration that she wasn't used to. Knowing a terrible secret--or in this case just suspecting one. What if she was right? What was she going to do?  
She still hadn't answered these questions as she skidded to a halt in the garage. She pressed the door control on her watch and the collapsible door closed behind her. She rushed up the stairs into the control room. She thanked Mackie's laziness as she found the CoreWar 2025 setup was as she left it.  
She sat down at Ebb-san's computer and started it up. It seemed to be taking longer to boot up than it should, Nene felt bile in her throat, and quickly hit the switch on the power strip. She rushed across to the other computer and quickly whipped up an Ultrix boot-disk. She only hoped that Ebb-san's little program hadn't covered his tracks completely. Most people wouldn't have realized what was happening before it was too late--but Nene was not most people.  
She got to the command prompt and started to poke around. Most of the files were still intact. She walked over to the rack of optical discs which contained all of the system software she'd written over the years, and took the disc containing her Lazarus program.  
She managed to retrieve all of the chunks, though there would obviously be corruption. She quickly started to flit through them. She found the program that he had used to rebind her keys. She couldn't put her finger on it, but there was something very strange about it.  
She went into the /cmp/ directory and found that Mackie had given him a FORTRAN-2010 compiler to work with. Ouch. It was very unlikely that he could've written a program that complex in FORTRAN in 14 minutes.  
Then Nene realized what was wrong. She opened up the "latchkeykid" program in the byte viewer. This program hadn't been compiled. It was possible that the compiler tag had been lost when she retrieved it... But these commands were far too clean and unique for an automated system. The program had been hand-coded; but no one could write that fast in assembler. NO ONE. Add to that the fact that there was no assembler program on this computer.  
Nene felt her stomach tighten. Son of a bitch. She stared at the blue void of the byte-viewer display for almost ten minutes before she moved again. She picked up the phone and dialed Huey's number.  
"Hey, Ebb-san, it's Molly. Why don't you meet me at the garage, there's something I want to show you," Nene said.  
"Can't it wait until morning?" Huey said.  
"You know how impatient I am, Ebby," Nene said. "I want you here in an hour, capiche?". He mumbled something. Nene guessed that was good enough and hung up. She started to pace. What the hell was she going to do now? No, that's a cop-out.  
She knew exactly what she was going to do--what she had to do. But it was going to be hard. She had never killed, much less murdered, someone.  
But, she thought darkly, there's always a first time for everything.

Then

"Why would anyone want to attack Shibuya?" Nene asked. "Someone have a dress they couldn't return"  
"They don't set out to attack anything, they just sort of go haywire and wander off," Linna tried to explain.  
"They're evil boomers," Priss said. "It's what they do"  
The Knight Sabers, now numbering four, sat in the back of the van as Mackie drove them towards Shibuya. Priss, Linna and Nene were holding their helmets in their laps, but Sylia had been wearing hers since they got in the van. Nene found it unnerving to have the faceless Knight Saber staring back at her.  
"You'd better not flake out on us, kid," Priss said. "We have enough screw-ups in this outfit as it is," she said, jerking her head towards the front seat.  
"You're really unpleasant to be around, you know that?" Nene said.  
Priss simply growled and turned away. "Hey, boy wonder, we there yet"  
"Another ten minutes," Mackie said.  
"Hey," Nene said. "How come the color of the back door is different from the rest of the interior? What happened"  
Linna chuckled, but Priss simply deepened her scowl.  
"You're very observant, Nene," Sylia offered.  
"Uh, thanks," Nene said.  
"We should be close enough, Nene. Get on the scope," Sylia said.  
"All right," Nene said, picking up her helmet, but she stopped as she saw the head of Sylia's hardsuit shake back-and-forth. Sylia pointed to the terminal in the back. "The van's terminal is better for long-term observation"  
"Oh, of course," Nene said. She walked over to the van and pulled the UPB plug from her suit and plugged it into the main port. She sat down and donned her helmet.  
She brought up the newsfeed and watched the chaos in Shibuya. The long-range antennae was picking up a scrambled mess. She quickly broke it up into what she hoped were component parts and began to look for patterns.  
"Anything, Nene-chan?" Sylia asked.  
"Just a sec," Nene said. This felt familiar, it was something she'd done ever since she had her first computer at age ten. But this was different--she had greater tools at her disposal, the computer's reaction time was instantaneous.  
But it was more than that. It wasn't just idle play anymore--what she was doing mattered. Every second that passed meant more lives. There could be no errors.  
She had been recording for ninety seconds. She quickly played back each component signal. There didn't appear to be--wait. She saw it, a repeating trough. Clever, very clever. Absence of signal as identification. The signal terminated every 10.217 seconds. It was like basing morse code around the pauses instead of the dots and dashes.  
"I think I have something," Nene said.  
"Jam them," Sylia said.  
"No, I think I might be able to--" Nene started.  
"Jam them, god damn it!" Priss yelled.  
Nene clenched her teeth, she brought up the jamming program but didn't execute it. She wasn't going to flood the frequency, but would send out a signal when the identification trough was due. That way they would keep waiting for orders, not realizing they'd missed them. But still, if she could figure out.  
Nene's eyes shifted to the video-feed which was still playing. GENOM combat model, 12A class. She had been reading a top-secret manual of their assembly language only the night before. Maybe she could do something better.  
"Nene, are you jamming them?" Priss said.  
"Just a minute," Nene said.  
"Every minute you waste someone dies!" Priss screeched. This made Nene turn to look at Priss. There was genuine emotion there; genuine pain.  
"I... I think I can-" Nene sputtered. People WERE dying. What right did she have to indulge her stupid hacker ethic?  
"Trust her," Sylia said.  
It was said so calmly, but Priss and Linna both looked as if struck. Priss backed down, and took her seat next to Linna.  
Nene, shaken but hopefully still competent, turned back to her program.  
Okay, she knew the update algorithm; that was one of the pieces of software she'd put in the supercomputer when the suit's frame hadn't even been built.  
She needed to write a very simple program... Since the boomers were networked she only had to send it to one of them, and it would send them on to the rest.  
All right, the fuel cell... If the valve on the deuterium oxide feed was opened all the way, the chamber would be flooded and the reaction would tear it,  
and the boomer, apart. Since fusion reactions had to be fed to be kept going,  
the explosion wouldn't extend much further beyond the boomer itself. But the neutrons... Damn it, the shielding would rupture and some free neutrons would escape. Free neutrons were the most dangerous kind of radiation; anyone within a ten foot radius of the boomer when it blew might suffer radiation poisoning.  
They could die several years down the road--but how many people WOULD die if she didn't act? If she jammed the signal the independent boomers would still be able to act on their own... No, this was the only choice. And God forgive her for any innocent lives she took in the process.  
She wrote the program and sent it. Several moments passed, and the scene at Shibuya changed. The reporter couldn't help but smile.  
"Yes, it has been confirmed, all four of the boomers have been destroyed.  
It's believed that they have self-destructed, but we don't know at this time"  
The van jerked to a halt. "Shibuya; we're here," Mackie said.  
Linna and Priss pulled on their helmets. Priss slammed her gauntleted fist into her other hand. "Come on, let's get them"  
The side walls of the van fell away and the Knight Sabers climbed out.  
Nene sheepishly walked over to Sylia.  
"Knight Sabers," Sylia started.  
"Ah, I think we're done here," Nene said.  
"What!" Priss said.  
"I tricked them into destroying themselves," Nene said. "I don't think the trick will work twice. But hey, we can take off early"  
"Oh," Linna said, her shoulders slumping. Nene couldn't believe the disappointment in her voice. Linna had seemed like such a Pollyanna.  
"Damn it, I was really itching for a fight!" Priss complained.  
"Good work, Nene," Sylia said.  
Nene felt a swell of pride; she felt her heart pounding in her chest, but it was no longer out of fear. She had saved lives. She had given up so much,  
gone so far into this world she knew so little about. But she had never felt better or more alive. This--she realized--is what she was meant to do. She was exceptional; she was a hero.  
"But they're not even going to know it was us!" Priss bitched.  
"Is a good deed worth doing only if you gain recognition?" Sylia asked.  
"Oh!" Nene said. "That reminds me..." She held out her gauntleted hand and signaled a program. A series of laser beams shot out of her gauntlet onto the pavement beneath them. They moved swiftly, computer controlled, within seconds they ceased, and a signature had been burnt into the concrete beneath their feet.  
Knight Sabers, it read. Together at last.

Now

"I see you dressed for the occasion, Nene," Huey said. "Though, personally,  
I would've preferred something more akin to an evening gown"  
Nene stood dispassionately against the night sky; which wasn't difficult since the blank faceplate betrayed no emotion.  
Huey let the door to the roof fall close and walked towards the armored battletank that enveloped his former friend. "I take it this isn't a social call"  
"Who are you working for?" Nene asked.  
"Why do you assume I'm working for anyone other than myself?" Huey asked.  
"Because you were never that smart. You were always the dimmest bulb in the drawer, to mix a metaphor," Nene said.  
Huey bore his clenched teeth. "But that's not the situation anymore, is it"  
"So they upgraded your mind in exchange for infiltrating the Knight Sabers," Nene said.  
"What makes you think I was after the Knight Sabers?" Huey asked.  
Nene's response was choked. "What the hell are you talking about"  
"They're all dead, you know. Red, Wimbley, Gobo. We're all that's left of the fugar gang. But I suppose you already know that," Huey said. "They were given a choice: serve or die. They each died writhing in agony, cursing Molotov for what happened to them. I know: they made me watch. They all suffered and died, because of you Nene," he laughed bitterly. "They didn't even give a damn about any of us--we were only useful because, through us, they could find you.  
You're the one they wanted"  
"Who's 'they'? GENOM?" Nene said.  
Huey dismissively turned away from Nene. His gaze fell on the cityscape,  
and the giant tower that dominated it. "GENOM, feh," he said. "GENOM is a little kid in a sandbox banging two warheads together"  
"Who then?" Nene said.  
"Patience. You'll know soon enough," Huey said. He took a small device from his hand and held it up for Nene to see. He extended a small antennae from the top of it and was about to flick a switch when a shot rang out. The device fell to the ground as a hole was bored through his hand. Another shot caused the back of his head to explode in a blossom of blood. Huey Ebson was dead by the time he hit the pavement.  
Nene looked over the corpse to see Sylia, clenching a smoking gun in her hands.  
"How did you know?" Nene asked.  
"The datestamp. On April 1st, 2032 you reset the year on the server to 1921. It wasn't changed until the synchronization on May 1st," Sylia said.  
"You knew all this time!" Nene yelled.  
"I knew only that he faked the datestamp. He could have simply been trying to hide his shame. It did take over two years for him to crack the code," Sylia said.  
It had been a grisly job getting Huey into the stand-up MRI. For the first time, Nene wished they had one of the flatbed models. Sylia held him in place while Nene worked the controls.  
"Hey Sylia, come take a look at this," Nene said.  
After setting him on the ground, Sylia walked over to look at the screen.  
Something flashed across her face as she looked at the image.  
"Do you recognize this design?" Nene asked nonchalantly.  
"No, not at all... So, he was a boomeroid"  
"No, not exactly. Even with the heavy modifications to his cerebrum, less than 20 of his body was replaced with cybernetic components," Nene said. "I know GENOM was into cyberorganics, but I didn't know they were this far advanced"  
"This isn't GENOM," Sylia said.  
"How can you be sure?" Nene asked.  
But Sylia didn't answer that question. Not then, or ever.

Nene was glad to get off her feet; it had been a long day. She was also glad to get out in the open air. The inside of ADPolice headquarters still smelled of smoke and charred plastic. It would be a long time before those reminders of Dr. Yoshida's attempt to destroy the place would fade away.  
Nene laid her back against the railing and took in MegaTokyo's majestic sunset. Although it was nice that the sun was figuratively setting on GENOM,  
it wasn't literal in this case. The tower was to the east of ADPolice, so Nene didn't have to look at it. Rumors were that once GENOM moved out they were going to sell it to a Dutch shoe company. Well, best to sell it to fellow countrymen,  
she guessed.  
"Thought I might find you here," a calm and familiar voice said. "There's just something about you and sunsets"  
"It makes me feel at peace," Nene said simply. "It reminds me of something I read in a book once. 'Sleep after toil, Port after stormy seas, Ease after war, Death after life does greatly please"  
"Edmund Spenser, the Faerie Queen," Sylia said. "I like that quote too"  
She sat down next to Nene.  
"I was starting to get ahead of myself," Nene said. "I was just so tired that I forgot that this complicated life of mine has meaning"  
"I don't suspect we'll be doing this forever, Nene. You said it yourself,  
GENOM is almost gone," Sylia said.  
"But there will always be dragons to slay," Nene said; she then turned to her mentor. "Why did you do it? You knew that I was going to jam whatever signal he sent out"  
"I also knew you couldn't leave him alive," Sylia said. "I figure that in this business you'll eventually have to take a human life. But I wanted to hold that day back as far as I could. You still have some of your innocence left," Nene said.  
Nene scoffed. "I've never been innocent in all the time you've known me"  
"Take it from someone who knows, Nene. You didn't see your father gunned down by a man he trusted. You didn't see your father's work, conceived in the most idealistic expression of the human spirit, warped to suit the darkest needs of humanity," Sylia said.  
"That would be kind of hard," Nene said. "My father's a dentist"  
Sylia laughed out loud: it was a strong hearty laugh, not the chortle that had become her trademark. Sylia quickly caught herself, but couldn't keep the grin off her face.  
-The End-

All comments are welcome: Begun: March 6, 2005 Finished: April 6, 2005 Thanks to the Navy's astronomical site which I used to calculate when the sun would set in Tokyo on February 3rd, 2034. 


End file.
